5 Forgotten Copywriters Who Were Better Than the Famous Ones

The Copywriters Nobody Talks About

Every copywriter knows the famous names. David Ogilvy. Gary Halbert. Eugene Schwartz. They deserve their reputations, and I have written extensively about what their work teaches modern practitioners.

But here is something I have learned across 30-plus years of studying this craft: the copywriters who invented the most important principles in advertising are not always the ones who became famous. Some of the most foundational ideas in direct-response copywriting came from people whose names rarely appear on bestseller lists, conference stages, or social media quote graphics.

These are the copywriters who laid the groundwork that the famous ones built upon. Their contributions shaped everything that followed — from the way we structure sales letters to the way we think about audience psychology. And yet, most working copywriters today have never heard of them.

That is a loss. Because when you study the originals — the people who discovered the principles first — you gain a depth of understanding that studying the popularisers alone cannot provide. You see why these ideas work, not just how to apply them. And that deeper understanding is what separates copywriters who follow formulas from copywriters who create campaigns that outperform everything else in the market.

What follows is not an exhaustive list. It is a curated selection of five copywriters whose work I have studied deeply and whose principles I have applied in my own campaigns — campaigns that have collectively generated over $523 million in tracked results. These are the people who, in my assessment, contributed ideas that are equal to or more important than many of the techniques attributed to their more famous successors.

1. John E. Kennedy (1864-1928) — The Man Who Defined Advertising

If you had to pick one moment when modern copywriting was born, it would be an evening in 1904 when a Canadian-born copywriter named John E. Kennedy sent a note to Albert Lasker, the head of the Lord & Thomas advertising agency. The note said, simply, that Kennedy could explain what advertising really was. When Lasker invited him upstairs, Kennedy delivered three words that changed the industry forever: advertising is salesmanship in print.

This was not a clever turn of phrase. It was a complete reorientation of what advertising was supposed to do. At the time, most advertising was entertainment — clever slogans, pretty illustrations, amusing wordplay. Kennedy argued that an ad should do the same job as a salesperson: make a case, present evidence, and ask for the sale. Every word should advance the argument. Every element should serve the persuasion.

Kennedy then introduced the mechanism for making this work: reason-why advertising. Instead of saying a product was excellent, you explained exactly why it was excellent. Instead of making a claim, you provided the evidence that supported the claim. The reader's natural scepticism was addressed not by louder claims but by better reasons.

Why Kennedy matters more than you think

Kennedy's definition directly influenced Claude Hopkins, who joined Lord & Thomas after Kennedy and built on his work to write Scientific Advertising. Hopkins influenced Ogilvy. Ogilvy influenced the modern advertising industry. The chain of intellectual inheritance runs directly from Kennedy's three words to virtually every copywriting formula used today.

But here is the part most people miss: Kennedy's reason-why principle is not just a technique — it is a philosophy of respect for the reader. It assumes the reader is intelligent enough to be persuaded by evidence rather than manipulated by hype. In a landscape where most marketing still relies on unsupported claims and manufactured urgency, Kennedy's approach is more relevant and more effective than ever.

When I write long-form sales copy or VSL scripts, the reason-why framework is embedded in every proof section, every bullet point, every claim I make. It is the mechanism that builds credibility. And it traces directly back to John E. Kennedy — a man most copywriters have never heard of.

“Advertising is salesmanship in print. If you think of it that way — not as art, not as entertainment, but as a salesman who must justify his cost in sales — then you will write ads that sell.”

2. Helen Lansdowne Resor (1886-1964) — The First Great Female Copywriter

Helen Lansdowne started at the Procter & Collier agency in Cincinnati before joining J. Walter Thompson in 1908, where she became one of the most influential figures in advertising history. She was the first woman to wield significant creative power at a major agency, and she used that power to revolutionise how products were sold to women — and, ultimately, how products were sold to everyone.

Resor understood something that her male colleagues did not: women controlled the majority of household purchasing decisions. And the way to reach women was not through rational, features-based arguments — it was through emotion, aspiration, and social identification. She pioneered the use of aspirational imagery in advertising, the use of testimonials from respected society figures, and the integration of beauty and self-improvement into product messaging.

Her campaigns for Woodbury's Facial Soap are often cited as the turning point. At the time, discussing skin care was considered improper in polite company. Resor broke this taboo with the headline "A skin you love to touch" — copy that spoke directly to a woman's desire to be attractive and desirable. The campaign transformed Woodbury's from a failing brand into a market leader and proved that emotional copy could drive hard commercial results.

Resor's contribution to modern copywriting

What Resor understood instinctively has since been validated by decades of psychology research: emotional responses drive purchasing decisions far more powerfully than rational arguments alone. The rational mind justifies the decision after the emotional brain has already made it. Every modern copywriter who leads with emotion and supports with logic is following a path Resor blazed over a century ago.

Her use of aspirational identity — showing the reader not just what the product does, but who the reader becomes by using it — is the foundation of modern brand copywriting and increasingly drives sales page copy as well. When a sales page or VSL paints a picture of the reader's life after the transformation, that is Helen Lansdowne Resor's legacy in action.

She also pioneered the celebrity testimonial format that became standard in advertising. By featuring endorsements from respected women in society, she added a layer of social proof that made her campaigns feel like recommendations from a trusted peer rather than pitches from a corporation. Every testimonial section on a modern sales page, every influencer partnership, every customer story leveraged for persuasion — all of these descend from the framework Resor established.

In an era dominated by men who wrote copy for men, Resor proved that understanding your audience — truly understanding who they are, what they want, and how they see themselves — is the ultimate competitive advantage. That lesson has not aged a day.

3. Maxwell Sackheim (1890-1982) — The Inventor of Continuity Marketing

Maxwell Sackheim's contributions to advertising were so foundational that entire business models depend on them — yet his name is virtually unknown outside of advertising history circles. He co-founded the Book-of-the-Month Club in 1926, pioneering the negative-option continuity model that became the template for subscription businesses. And he wrote one of the longest-running and most profitable advertisements in history.

The headline "Do You Make These Mistakes in English?" ran for Sherwin Cody's English course and remained in continuous profitable use for over 40 years — from the 1910s through the 1950s. That is not a typo. The same ad, running profitably for four decades, across multiple media, through two World Wars, a Great Depression, and massive cultural shifts. No other single ad in history can claim that kind of longevity.

Why the headline worked for 40 years

Sackheim's headline is a masterclass in headline psychology that rewards deep study. It works on multiple levels simultaneously.

First, it targets a universal insecurity. Almost everyone worries about making grammatical errors, especially in professional settings. The headline taps directly into that anxiety — which is a fear of social embarrassment, one of the most powerful motivators in human psychology.

Second, the word "these" does enormous work. It is specific without being specific. It implies there is a defined list of mistakes — and the reader does not know what they are. This creates a curiosity gap that can only be closed by reading further.

Third, "Do you" makes it personal. It is not a general statement about mistakes people make. It is a direct question aimed at the reader, which triggers self-examination. The reader cannot help but wonder: do I make these mistakes?

This single headline contains principles that modern copywriters study in isolation — curiosity gaps, personal relevance, emotional triggers, specificity without detail — woven together into 36 characters. Sackheim was not working from formulas. He was working from an intuitive understanding of human psychology that formulas later attempted to codify.

“Do You Make These Mistakes in English? — this single headline ran profitably for over 40 years. The principles it embodies — universal insecurity, implied specificity, personal relevance — are as potent today as they were in 1919.”

Sackheim's continuity model

Sackheim's other world-changing contribution was the negative-option continuity model. With the Book-of-the-Month Club, customers received a monthly selection automatically unless they actively opted out. This was revolutionary. It shifted the burden of action from buying to cancelling — an inversion that dramatically increased customer lifetime value.

Every subscription box. Every SaaS business with automatic renewal. Every membership site with monthly billing. Every streaming service. They all descend from the model Sackheim helped create. The recurring revenue economy that dominates modern business was, in many ways, born in Sackheim's mind.

For copywriters, the lesson is profound: the business model is part of the copy. Sackheim did not just write better ads — he invented a better commercial architecture that made the ads more profitable. The smartest direct-response copywriters today think the same way. They do not just write the sales page — they consider the offer structure, the pricing model, the follow-up sequence, and the retention strategy as part of the persuasion system.

4. Victor Schwab (1898-1980) — The Man Who Systematised Copywriting

Victor Schwab spent decades as a copywriter and advertising executive, working with some of the most successful direct mail campaigns of the mid-twentieth century. His enduring contribution was How to Write a Good Advertisement — a book that did something no previous copywriting text had accomplished: it turned the ad-writing process into a systematic, step-by-step framework that anyone could follow.

Before Schwab, writing effective advertising was largely considered a matter of talent and instinct. You either had the gift or you did not. Schwab rejected this entirely. He argued that effective advertising followed identifiable patterns and that those patterns could be taught, practised, and replicated. He was, in essence, the first person to treat copywriting as an engineering discipline rather than an artistic one.

Schwab's five-step framework

Schwab broke the advertising process into five essential stages:

Get attention. Your ad must interrupt the reader's day and earn the right to be read. Without attention, nothing else matters. Schwab catalogued hundreds of headlines that won attention and analysed what made them effective — producing one of the earliest systematic studies of headline performance.

Show people an advantage. Once you have attention, you must immediately show the reader what is in it for them. Not features. Not specifications. A clear, personal advantage that connects to something they want or a problem they need solved.

Prove it. Claims without proof are just noise. Schwab insisted that every advantage claim be supported with evidence — testimonials, statistics, demonstrations, guarantees. This is Kennedy's reason-why principle operationalised at scale.

Persuade people to grasp that advantage. Showing the advantage is not enough. You must make the reader feel the advantage — visualise it, want it, believe they can have it. This is where emotional writing, story, and future-pacing enter the framework.

Ask for action. Every ad must close with a clear, specific call to action. Schwab was emphatic that vague closes — "visit us sometime" or "learn more" — were the death of conversions. The reader needs to be told exactly what to do next and why doing it now matters.

Why Schwab's framework still outperforms

This five-step structure is not just a historical curiosity. It is the underlying architecture of virtually every high-converting sales page, VSL script, and email sequence produced today. The frameworks that modern copywriting courses teach — AIDA, PAS, the classic copywriting formulas — are variations on the structure Schwab laid out.

What makes Schwab's version particularly valuable is its emphasis on proof and persuasion as distinct stages. Many modern copywriters collapse these into one. They make a claim, toss in a testimonial, and move on. Schwab understood that proving a claim (making the reader believe it is true) and persuading the reader to act on it (making them feel they personally should act) are two different psychological operations that require different techniques. Copy that proves without persuading generates agreement but not action. Copy that persuades without proving generates interest but not trust.

In my own work, when I audit underperforming sales pages or VSLs, the most common structural problem I find maps directly to Schwab's framework. The page either fails to prove its claims adequately (the reader believes the promise but not the evidence) or fails to persuade the reader that the advantage applies to them personally (the reader believes the evidence but does not feel it is relevant to their situation). Schwab identified these failure modes decades before conversion rate optimisation existed as a discipline.

5. Robert Collier (1885-1950) — The Master of the Mental Conversation

Robert Collier's name appears occasionally in copywriting book lists and he features in my guide to famous copywriters, but his work is studied far less than it deserves. His book, The Robert Collier Letter Book, is one of the most practical and insightful texts ever written about persuasive writing — and the principle he is most famous for is, in my estimation, the single most important concept in all of copywriting.

That principle: always enter the conversation already taking place in the customer's mind.

This is not a technique. It is a complete philosophy of communication. Collier understood that your prospect is not a blank slate waiting to receive your message. They are a person in the middle of their own life, with their own worries, desires, fears, and ongoing internal dialogues. Your copy does not arrive in a vacuum. It arrives in the middle of a conversation the reader is already having with themselves.

If your opening connects to that existing conversation — if it addresses what the reader is already thinking about, already worried about, already wanting — then you earn instant attention and credibility. The reader feels understood. They feel like you are speaking directly to their situation. They keep reading.

If your opening ignores that conversation and starts with what you want to talk about — your product, your company, your offer — the reader's internal response is disinterest. You are interrupting their conversation with a topic they did not ask about.

Collier in practice

Collier demonstrated this principle through hundreds of real sales letter examples in his book. He showed how the same product could be sold with dramatically different results depending on whether the opening connected to the reader's existing mental state.

A letter selling a set of history books to recent purchasers of a competing book would open by acknowledging the reader's interest in history — entering their existing conversation about learning and self-improvement. A letter selling the same books to a business audience would open by connecting history to business strategy and decision-making — entering a different conversation about professional advantage.

The product was the same. The proof was the same. The offer was the same. What changed was the entry point — where Collier met the reader in their own mental world. And that entry point made the difference between a letter that was ignored and a letter that generated sales.

Why Collier's principle is the key to modern copywriting

In the digital landscape of 2026, where attention is more scarce than it has ever been, Collier's principle is not just relevant — it is essential. Every Facebook ad must enter the conversation happening in the scroller's mind in the first second. Every email subject line must connect to what the recipient is thinking about when they check their inbox. Every VSL hook must meet the viewer where they already are emotionally and psychologically.

This is why voice-of-customer research has become the most valuable skill in modern copywriting. When you study your audience's forums, reviews, support tickets, and social media posts, you are mapping the conversations already taking place in their minds. When you use their exact language, their exact phrases, their exact descriptions of their problems in your copy, you are entering those conversations at the deepest possible level.

Collier was doing this in the 1920s and 1930s — without the internet, without analytics tools, without the ability to read thousands of customer reviews in an afternoon. He did it through careful observation, deep empathy, and an intuitive grasp of human psychology that most copywriters today, with all their modern tools, still struggle to match.

Building a swipe file of Collier's letters and studying how he tailored each opening to a specific audience's mental state is one of the highest-leverage investments any copywriter can make. The patterns he demonstrated are timeless because they are grounded in how the human mind actually works — not in any particular medium, technology, or cultural moment.

What These Five Copywriters Teach Us Together

When you study these five forgotten pioneers as a group, a pattern emerges that is difficult to see when you study only the famous copywriters.

The fundamentals were established earlier than most people realise. Kennedy defined the purpose of advertising in 1904. Resor proved the power of emotional copy in the 1910s. Sackheim invented continuity marketing in the 1920s. Schwab systematised the ad-writing process in the 1940s. Collier codified the principle of audience-first communication in the 1930s. The famous copywriters who came later — Ogilvy, Halbert, Schwartz — built on these foundations. They refined, expanded, and popularised these principles. But they did not invent them.

The principles that last are rooted in psychology, not technique. Kennedy's reason-why principle works because humans need justification for their decisions. Resor's emotional approach works because purchasing is an emotional process rationalised after the fact. Sackheim's continuity model works because inertia is a more powerful force than intention. Schwab's framework works because persuasion follows a predictable cognitive sequence. Collier's conversation-entering principle works because attention is granted to relevance and denied to interruption. These are not tactics that expire — they are descriptions of how minds work.

The best copywriters were also business strategists. Kennedy did not just write ads — he redefined what advertising was for. Resor did not just write copy — she understood market segments decades before the concept existed in marketing textbooks. Sackheim did not just sell books — he invented a business model. Schwab did not just write good ads — he engineered a repeatable system. Collier did not just persuade — he built a methodology for understanding audiences. The copywriters who produce the biggest results are never just writers. They are thinkers who happen to express their thinking through copy.

Applying the Forgotten Lessons

If you are a working copywriter or a business owner writing your own marketing, here is how I recommend engaging with these overlooked pioneers.

Study the originals, not just the summaries. Read The Robert Collier Letter Book. Read Schwab's How to Write a Good Advertisement. Read about Kennedy's partnership with Lasker. Read about Resor's campaigns. Do not settle for second-hand accounts. The depth of insight in these primary sources rewards direct study.

Apply reason-why to every claim you make. Before you finalize any piece of copy — a sales page, a VSL, an email — go through every claim and ask: have I given the reader a specific, credible reason to believe this? If the answer is no, you are relying on assertion, which is the weakest form of persuasion. Kennedy solved this problem in 1904. Use his solution.

Enter the conversation before you start your pitch. Before you write your opening, define the conversation already happening in your prospect's mind. What are they worried about? What have they tried that has failed? What do they want that they do not yet have? Start there. Not with your product. Not with your offer. With their reality.

Systematise your process. Schwab proved that the best copy comes from a disciplined process, not from moments of inspiration. Build your own framework — informed by Schwab, by proven formulas, by your own testing — and follow it consistently. Consistent process produces consistent results.

Think beyond the copy. Sackheim's greatest contribution was not a headline — it was a business model. The modern copywriter who thinks about offer structure, pricing psychology, retention mechanics, and customer lifetime value alongside the words on the page will always outperform the copywriter who thinks only about the words.

Where This Leads

The copywriting profession has a tendency to lionise a small number of famous practitioners while ignoring the broader lineage that produced them. That is understandable — history simplifies, and fame is self-reinforcing. But it is also a missed opportunity. The copywriters profiled here were not lesser talents who failed to gain recognition. They were foundational thinkers whose ideas shaped the work of everyone who followed.

Studying their contributions does not just make you a more knowledgeable copywriter. It makes you a more effective one. Because when you understand why the principles work — not just which formulas to apply — you can adapt those principles to any market, any medium, and any era. You stop being a formula-follower and become a strategic thinker who understands the mechanics of persuasion at their deepest level. That is the advantage these forgotten copywriters offer. And it is an advantage that most of your competitors will never discover, because they have never looked beyond the famous names.

That is the kind of depth I bring to every project I take on. After three decades of studying both the celebrated and the overlooked masters of this craft — and applying their principles across $523 million in tracked results — I can tell you that the principles on this page are not academic history. They are the engine behind copy that outperforms.

If you are looking for a copywriter who understands these foundational principles and knows how to apply them to modern campaigns — sales pages, VSL scripts, email sequences, and full-funnel systems — I would welcome the conversation. Get in touch here and let us discuss what a historically-informed, results-driven approach could look like for your business.